wking

It may not be, the 15n20 had a brownish tinge in areas when it was in the etchant for about 4 hours. Being that it is my first time using it, that may be normal and what others desire. I cut the instant coffee with a little more water, and reduced the soak time by 2 hours and the result was more to my liking for what I was going for

I understand, I have completed my first instant coffee etch and you were absolutely right... I was very pleased with the results! The 1084 was MUCH darker than it was with any other method I have tried. I may have made it a little too strong and it discolored parts of the 15n20, so I removed the oxides once again and I am going to try a second time! I will post a picture when I pull it out of the etch. Thank you again! Will King

Thanks Alan! I am glad to enter the community, and have an opportunity to learn! I don't have any real training or experience so I am excited to be able to hear from experts. I will keep the mother's around for when I attempt a hamon in the future, but in the meantime I will most definitely be trying the instant coffee etch! One question, after the etch in instant coffee, do I need to "set the oxides" by boiling it in water or holding it at a certain temperature as you mentioned? I greatly appreciate the advice and the explanation of unprotected oxides not being permane

So I'm a newbie and I was finally able to successfully crank out a small San Mai billet of 1084 core and 15N20 by hand. I was excited to see what I could do with it after looking at work by guys like Josh Fisher. I profiled the knife, put bevels on it, then threw it in ferric for the test etch which revealed a pretty neat pattern. I decided I'd like it to be fairly nice looking, being that it is my first San Mai blade, so I took it up to 3k grit with hand sanding. I then followed etching processes that I had researched, with very bad results in the ferric. The acid left the s